It’ clear that one of Donald Trump’s handlers got hold of his leash and yanked it after his absurd comments Saturday, venerating Vladimir Putin and denigrating American intelligence agencies who are all in firm agreement that Russian meddling in the 2016 election took place. Trump did his best to walk it all back Sunday. Reuters:
At a news conference in Vietnam, Trump distanced himself from remarks he made on Saturday in which he suggested he believed Putin when he said there had been no Russian meddling in the election that took him to the White House.
“As to whether I believe it or not, I’m with our agencies, especially as currently constituted,” Trump said at a news conference with Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang.
“As currently led, by fine people, I believe very much in our intelligence agencies.”
He was careful to make clear he sided with the intelligence agencies under his own leadership.
Former U.S. intelligence director James Clapper had told Reuters: “The fact the president of the United States would take Putin at his word over that of the intelligence community is quite simply unconscionable.”
What is also clear is that the Kremlin is getting fed up with their waffling, ineffectual toady:
MOSCOW (Reuters) – The Kremlin said on Sunday that inflexibility on the part of the United States was to blame for the lack of a bilateral meeting between Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump during a summit in Vietnam.
“Unfortunately the American side did not offer any alternatives despite all efforts of our Russian colleagues. There was only one time offered that was convenient for the American side, and only one place offered, which had already been rented by the Americans,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was quoted as saying by the RIA news agency.
“The Americans showed no flexibility, and unfortunately did not offer any other alternative proposals. That is why the meeting could not happen,” Peskov added.
Putin hasn’t taken off his loafer and banged it on a podium yet — at least not publicly — but the handwriting is on the wall that Moscow-Washington relations are getting increasingly frosty and Putin is unquestionably frustrated at how his lapdog just can’t follow the simplest of commands.
Now is the winter of our discontent and it will be so until we remove Donald Trump from an office he is so blatantly and embarrassingly incompetent to hold.
